


What We Left Behind

by InsaneJul



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Dialogue Heavy, Fake Science, Flashbacks, Friendship/Love, Introspection, Long-Distance Friendship, Memory Related, Missing Scene, Multi, Parent-Child Relationship, Unresolved Romantic Tension, bonding moment, time travel (sorta)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-05-26 14:24:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15002747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsaneJul/pseuds/InsaneJul
Summary: During their two-year absence, Keith and Krolia visit a particularly painful memory of Keith's.





	What We Left Behind

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I know extremely well that this isn't how gravitational time dilation works. I learned about special relativity in physics class, did more research after watching season 6, and went on a long rant that my poor friend paladumb had to read about how wrong the show managed to get it. But I had to be canon compliant, so here is the Mom fic where Krolia teases Keith about his crush on Lance. Beta read by paladumb <3

            Keith was used to the flashes of yellow light. He’d gotten to the point where his only reaction would be to close his eyes against the oppressive brightness and when he saw his own memories, they were easy to ignore.

            Krolia’s were a little harder. And they were more frequent, too. She’d said that they would catch glimpses of the future as well as the past, but since that… _thing_ with Shiro, he hadn’t seen any. Instead, he watched the past unfold and wondered what things he’d never be able to see.

            “Do you suppose we’ll see memories we don’t remember ourselves?” He asked Krolia one day, whittling a stick into something sharper for throwing.

            “What do you mean?”

            “I mean, are we seeing our memories or are we seeing things that happened near us?”

            She paused. “I think…memories.”

            “Do you think we’ll see things that aren’t related to us at all?”

            “No.” Krolia scratched the space fox behind the ears. “that’s not how this place works. We’re living our own lives, but nonlinearly.”

            “Okay.” He decided to be content with that, despite the fact that he had never paid attention in theoretical physics and failed his test on special relativity. “And…time works differently here.”

            “Yes.” She cocked her head at him. “Did you not learn anything about space-time on Earth?”

            “I was supposed to…” he muttered.

            She hummed amusedly and said, “We are directly next to a gravity well. Time moves faster near strong gravitational forces.”

            “So…”

            “Time is passing faster for us, Keith.”

            “For us than…the other paladins?”

            “Yes.”

            He stared into the fire for a long moment, trying to take that in.

            “How much faster?”

            “It’s hard to say. It depends on the strength of the gravitational force, and I have no way of knowing that without instruments.”

            “Okay.”

            There was a period of silence. The fox stretched and yawned.

            “Keith. What is it?”

            He started at her voice. “Uh. Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

            “I am your _mother_.” She folded her arms, ready for a confrontation. “I _want_ to worry about you.”

            “It’s just…what if it’s a really long time? What if my friends don’t recognize me?” Keith wrapped his arms around himself as if touched by a sudden, cold wind. “What if…I don’t recognize them?”

            Krolia recoiled, just by a small amount. _He actually needs me to say something reassuring, and I have nothing to give._ She worried her bottom lip between her teeth, then said, “Things will be different, of course they will. Hoping for things not to change is the most useless emotion in the universe. We will adapt, and you must have faith that they will adapt as well.”

            “I guess you—”

            Keith was cut off by another blinding flash, too engrossed in his fears to notice it coming. This time, it was a memory of his.

            “We did it,” Lance’s smile was weak, but genuine, and Keith strongly believes that it’s the best smile he’s ever seen on Lance’s face, maybe on anyone’s, anywhere, in the entire universe. “We are a good team.”

            Slowly but surely, the smile that he could never seem to repress when Lance is around crept onto Keith’s face. The shape and weight of Lance’s hand in his was so pleasant, and warm, and he started to think that maybe—

            Then all of sudden he was back in the cave, facing his mother across the fire, and Lance was far, far away, maybe even long ago as well, and he had to try and stop tears from coming to his eyes.

            “What’s his name?”

            “Huh?” Keith twisted his fingers together in an effort to not wipe his eyes. The fox nudged his knee, sensing the sudden shift in mood.

            “The blue paladin. He was wearing the paladin armor. That’s the one you don’t talk about. Is this memory…is that—?”

            “Just don’t, okay?” He stood up, brushed himself off, and patted the fox to try and calm it down. “I don’t want to talk about him—that’s probably obvious since I haven’t, so don’t ask.”

            “Keith, I just—”

            Before Keith can interrupt her, they are both stopped by another memory of Keith’s: standing outside the cryopod just after, everyone surrounding him. Asking how much better he might have gotten in the last few seconds. Hoping for it to be much better, for him to just _come out already_.

            Then, he was sitting on the table in the common area, Lance was eating, and he felt shocked, angry—“We had a bonding moment! I _cradled you in my arms_!”

            Lance just shook his head, didn’t even make eye contact with him. “Nope, don’t remember, didn’t happen.” Keith felt his anger rise, a familiar burn, then just fizzle out into something a lot more frightening—pain, sadness, confusion—how could he not remember?

            He realized his fists were clenched of their own volition when he came back to the present. Krolia and the fox were staring at him.

            “This is bullshit,” he hissed, and this time he gave in and wiped his wet eyes. “I didn’t want you to see that.”

            “Can you tell me what happened, Keith?”

            “You _saw_ what happened! For a second there I thought that—and then it turned out he didn’t even—it shouldn’t even matter anymore, it was a while ago, maybe by the time I get back to him it’ll be so long ago that I’ll have forgotten too—”

            “It won’t be _that_ long, Keith.” Krolia, who had apparently walked over to him while he was ranting, took his hands away from his face and led him to sit back down. He’s a little ashamed of it, but he sniffled when he did so and a tear did finally fall. She didn’t say anything about it.

            Keith wiped the tear away and said quietly, “his name is Lance.”

            “Oh, that’s a gay name, isn’t it?”

            “What?!”

            “It was in a musical your father showed me—”

            “You can’t believe everything you hear, especially in musicals! Plus, there’s no such thing as a ‘gay name’!”

            “Musicals are, I believe, one of the worst things humans ever came up with,” Krolia declared, dramatically enough that Keith smiled despite himself.

            “Yeah, they suck.”

            After a minute, she asked, “Do you think your Lance likes musicals?”

            “Well…” Keith thought about it for a moment. “I don’t know. He never talked about them, so I guess not. Wait—” his eyes widened as he realized what she said. “He’s not _my_ Lance.”

            “Then what is he to you?”

            “I…” This was one of the hardest questions he ever had to answer. He couldn’t call Lance a _rival_ , that’s how Lance saw it, not him—and, he was pretty sure, not anymore. Keith still regretted that he didn’t remember Lance from the Garrison. So that wasn’t it. A _colleague_? No, far too formal for somebody he’d held while they were injured—somebody who he may have feelings for. Lance had come to treat him much the same as he treated Hunk and Pidge, albeit a little more confrontationally—teasing, kindness, affection shrouded in insults and shouting—the way he treated his friends. “He’s my friend.”

            “Your _friend_.” She wasn’t convinced.

            “Maybe…kind of like…” _Lance yelling at him, Lance smiling at him, Lance pointing fingers at him. Lance, saying “hey buddy…”, pushing aside his own disappointment to support him. Lance, as_ his _red paladin. Lance, picking him up when he failed the team. Lance, opening up to him, allowing Keith to open up in return._ Keith turned the word over in his mouth before saying it out loud. “My partner."

            Krolia smiled. “That sounds more interesting."

            “Not like that. You saw what happened.” Keith folded in on himself, hunching his shoulders. “He doesn’t even remember it.”

            “That doesn’t mean he doesn’t like you!”

            “He’s always hitting on girls,” Krolia raised an eyebrow. “and he has a crush on Allura.”

            “The Altean princess?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Well, that doesn’t prove anything,” Krolia insisted. “Plenty of people have variety in their interests, like species and gender.”

            “I don’t really think—”

            “But you don’t know for sure, and as long as you don’t, there’s no reason to give up yet.”

            “Mom—” they both started at the word that slipped out. “Uh. Krolia, we don’t know what the time difference will be—maybe when I come back it’ll be too late—I won’t be able to—”

            “Keith.” He drew in a breath and held her gaze. “Where did you get this strange need to dwell on all the bad possibilities? It certainly didn’t come from me.”

            “I don’t know, maybe having to raise myself alone gave me some anxiety!”

            She gasped and pulled back from him, and he immediately regretted saying anything. “That’s not—”

            “No,” Krolia held up a hand. “you have a right to be upset.”

            They both took another silent moment to try and regain control. Keith dwelled on the thought that maybe he is a lot more like her than he first imagined.

            “I’m sorry,” he spoke first. “When I feel vulnerable, I tend to lash out. I know this is one of my flaws.”

            “I suppose that’s why you yelled at Lance, then.”

            Keith lowered his head into his hands. “I didn’t want to. I didn’t mean to. I just—I was hurt. And I don’t know how to feel hurt, especially not then, before I really knew _why_ —I’m so much better at mad.”

            “I understand. I should have been there to teach you better—” Krolia shook her head. “But there’s no point in trying to change the past. This place certainly has shown us that much.”

            “You’re here now,” her head snapped up to look at him, having heard the words she hadn’t known how much she needed to hear. “And that’s pretty good, I guess.”

            “Yes. I guess.”

            “So…” Keith leaned back. “As my mother…what do I do?”

            “About the blue paladin?”

            “He’s the red paladin now, but yeah.”

            “I really don’t know, Keith.” She closed her eyes. “Love is complicated.”

            “I never said I loved him!”

            “Well. Maybe you do and maybe you don’t. But you won’t see him for some time—who knows how long it will have been for him and for us when we return. What I think you should do…” Krolia smiled. “is focus on the good things.”

            “Should I try to figure out what to say…?”

            “We’re still in a war. Maybe, even if the time difference is not so great that it complicates a relationship, it still wouldn’t be the time to say something…”

            Keith grinned. “Wow, usually people say that love is the most important thing. That I should say something no matter what.”

            “You know that’s not how I think.” Krolia fixed him with a serious stare. “The mission still comes first, Keith.”

            “Yeah, I know.”

            “I do mean what I said before. Focus on the good things, the good memories you have together.” She sighed. “If that’s all you have then you should make the most of it.”

            “Okay, I’ll try to do that.”

            “But really, who named him?”

            “Come on, Krolia!”

            “A lance is an Earth _weapon_.”

            “So is this one!” Keith laughed. “He’s…he’s so much stronger than he looks, a really great fighter. Better than I even know, he must have gotten even stronger since I joined the Blade…” He suddenly squeezed his eyes shut. “Why the hell did I ever leave him. Them.”

            “You take after me,” Krolia said, staring into the fire. “The mission comes first. Even if we regret it later, we’re driven to act for the greater good.”

            “They were my family, the first real one I’d had since Dad died…and I missed so much, and now I’m missing even more. Pidge and Hunk probably tricked the hell out of the castle, Allura and her magic, Shiro…and Lance, he probably pushed himself to become better at piloting and fighting because he had this crazy idea stuck in his head that I was better than him, and he’s trying to fill my shoes…”

            “You sure know his motivations intimately.” Krolia remarked, trying to remain casual, but it clearly didn’t work. Keith rolled his eyes at her.

            “I’m not making so many assumptions. He wears his heart on his sleeve. He puts on this goofy act, but I don’t fall for it. If you look it’s actually really clear how he feels.”

            “Do you suppose they feel this much pain about missing your growth, as well?”

            Keith didn’t have to think twice before he answered her—the large group hug, the crying, Shiro’s proud and yet sad face, Lance’s “who am I gonna make fun of?”—it was the only sure thing in the world. “Yes.”

            Another flash of yellow light consumed them both, and while the exact circumstances were unclear, Keith saw, plain as day, all the paladins together once again. Landing, finally, on Earth—coming home.

**Author's Note:**

> This just ISN'T how time dilation WORKS and honestly it makes me so MAD but at least I got this thing full of feelings off my chest because I'm not ready to give up on klance just yet :P


End file.
